Network service providers and device manufacturers are continually challenged to deliver value and convenience to consumers by, for example, providing a suite of compelling network services. Subscription network services traditionally involve authenticating users during a user sign-on process. However, network resources are wasted and user experience is diminished when a user is required to sign-on several times to participate in multiple services. Thus there is a move to allow a user to sign-on once and thereby gain access to several services from the same provider.
Federated identity, or the “federation” of identity, refers to technologies, standards and use-cases which serve to enable the portability of identity information across otherwise autonomous security domains, e.g., by different providers. The ultimate goal of identity federation is to enable users of one domain to securely access data or systems of another domain seamlessly, and without the need for completely redundant user administration. As part of this goal, service providers and device manufacturers also face significant technical challenges to ensuring that once a user is authenticated into multiple services via a federated identity, service account information (e.g., user profile information, billing information, payment information, etc.) can also be federated or coordinated across the services to provide a seamless user experience.